Self Storage

“With fluid skill, bold as brass, Gayle Brandeis has revised the Song of Myself, reconfiguring ‘self’ as an open circle. This is a novel of passion and consequence, identity and accountability. I love the narrator, her children, her wild ride, and this truly American story of getting mad and getting wise.”

Barbara Kingsolver

author of The Poisonwood Bible

Flan Parker’s curious nature has translated into a thriving resale business. The secret of her success: unique and everyday treasures bought from the auctions of forgotten and abandoned storage units.

When Flan secures the winning bid on a box filled only with an address and a note inside bearing the word “yes,” she sets out to discover the source of this mysterious message and its meaning.

Armed with a well-worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that she turns to for guidance and solace, Flan becomes determined to find the “yes” in her own life. It is an inward journey with outward surprises. When her search draws her toward her Afghan neighbor, convinced that a world of secrets lies beneath the woman’s burqa, Flan’s personal quest unexpectedly enters a more public stage.

Deftly plotted and engagingly told, Gayle Brandeis’s new novel is a suspenseful, thought-provoking, and inspiring exploration of what it means to be a sensitive and thoughtful human being living in George W. Bush’s America.”

Adam Langer

author of Crossing California

“Gayle Brandeis’s marvelous new novel is a rare thing: a story of love, marriage, and friendship that stirs our most tender emotions without manipulation or bathos.”

Ayelet Waldman

author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

“Walt Whitman couldn’t have asked for a slyer, funnier, savvier envoy than Gayle Brandeis to carry his Song of Myself into our day and age.”

Abby Frucht

author of Fruit of the Month and Polly’s Ghost

“Peppered with wry wit and Walt Whitman, Self Storage is a skillfully told treasure hunter’s tale of compassion, coming of age, and, most importantly, transforming the life you’ve got into the life you want. In the American tradition of songs of oneself, Gayle Brandeis has written for her characters a standout song of personal growth accelerated by social awakening.”

Maria Dahvana Headley

author of The Year of Yes

“If you doubt that a deadly serious thread—and also somehow all but laugh-out-loud funny—can connect the pillage of metal storage units, the fierce devotion to family, the rape of human sensibility, and the pursuit of art, read Self Storage.…Just take the hand of its great-hearted and deeply bewildered heroine, Flan, and hang on for the ride.”

Jacquelyn Mitchard

author of Cage of Stars and The Deep End of the Ocean

“The personal and political collide in Gayle Brandeis’s complex and witty new novel, Self Storage. Like the flashlight Flan shines into storage lockers to find treasure, Brandeis’s novel illuminates the way we define our loved ones, our neighbors, and ourselves.”

Amanda Eyre Ward

author of How to Get Lost

“The Book of Dead Birds (2003), Brandeis’ debut, won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize. In her second brisk, covertly trenchant novel, Brandeis manages to weave Walt Whitman, 9/11, and secondhand goods into a provocative story about the nature of one’s self and the intrinsically human need to find meaning in life. Flannery cherishes an old edition of Leaves of Grass, her only bequest from her long-deceased mother. With Whitman as her spiritual guide, she lives hand-to-mouth with her soap-opera-addicted graduate-student husband, high-strung young son, and escape-artist toddler daughter in a Riverside, California, enclave for international scholars. To make ends meet, Flan buys and resells the auctioned-off, memory-laden contents of abandoned self-storage units. As though life isn’t precarious enough, Flan is drawn into a high-stakes drama involving her burka-wearing Afghan neighbor, the target of prejudice and hate crimes. Executing a marvelous narrative sleight of hand, Brandeis uses slyly insouciant humor and irresistible characters to delve into the true significance of neighborliness, advocate for doing the right thing, and celebrate a Whitmanesque embrace of life.”